Transhumance and Pastoral Management in the Middle Ages

Paper $55.00ISBN: 9780859898652
Published
April 2012
For sale in North and South America only

Cloth $125.00ISBN: 9780859898645
Published
April 2012
For sale in North and South America only

A striking and famous feature of the English landscape, Dartmoor (in the southwest of the country) is a beautiful place, with a sense of wildness and mystery. But in the Middle Ages intensive practical use was made of its resources: its extensive moorlands provided summer pasture for thousands of cattle from the Devon lowlands, which flowed in a seasonal tide, up in the spring and down in the autumn.

This book describes, for the first time, the social organization and farming practices associated with that annual transfer of livestock. It presents evidence for a previously unsuspected Anglo-Saxon period of transhumance, by which the cattle's lowland owners moved with their animals and lived temporarily on the moor every summer.

Introduction by Christopher Dyer and Matthew Tompkins 1. Definitions and limitations Defining Dartmoor's resources Dartmoor and its parts Transhumance and its types Limitations of this book 2. The red tides: impersonal transhumance and the central moor The central moor: ownership and commoners Distances travelled and middlemen Pastoral management: the herdsman's year Livestock: numbers and types 3. The red tides: impersonal transhumance and the outer moors Ownership and commoners Pastoral management: drifts, structures, strays Perambulation and dispute resolution Order and disorder: outer moors and the central moor 4. Personal transhumance: distant detachments Cockington and Dewdon Ipplepen, Abbotskerswell and their links Detached parts of the hundreds of Exminster, Wonford and Kerswell Kenton with Heatree Paignton and its parts Lifton and Sourton Northlew, Venn and Lettaford Tavistock and Cudlipp Bickleigh and Sheepstor The significance of the detachments 5. Personal transhumance: archaeology, topography, place-names and history Archaeology and topography Place-names and history: economy and society 6. Domesday Book and beyond: the transition from personal to impersonal transhumance The role of colonists The role of lords The role of the Crown 7. Dartmoor and beyond Droveways Pastoral husbandry The implications of transhumance for lowland farming Conclusion by Christopher Dyer and Matthew Tompkins

Notes Bibliography Index

Review Quotes

Landscape History

"His affection for its community meant he wrote more for pragmatic Devonshire people and practical historians than for outsiders with romanticised views of Dartmoor.

He wished to encourage and support local farmers by preparing an authoritative account of their history, regarding them as the wisest of Dartmoor’s ecologists, defending customs and grazings developed over many generations. The Moor, marginal to many, is in Fox’s hands in Devon’s enormous pool of available common pasture. . . . Harold Fox, in his final work, encourages all with an interest in our historic landscape to acknowledge the possibility that their own local patterns, colours and character were shaped by accommodation and servicing of seasonal movements of people and livestock…"

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